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You write:..."The level of seeing pin flex indicating 1/2 cent changes on either side of a stable spot, or calculating overshoots for pitch corrections in increments I would challenge any aural tuner to match. The machines provide information, they don't make one go deaf. More information, better control of the results."...

In my view, any tool can be useful if used properly. As John does, I relate stability to many factors, one of them being setting the pin, what I refer to as "pin charging". A second factor is "setting the soundboard", and I like to point out John's report (above) in that not often we can read about this. Actually that explaines why I do not "lay down" my tuning there and then, but try to anticipate the smallest soundboard sagging.

..."Well, this is where we differ. I can't hear the pin. I can feel the pin while hearing the string, but my point is that you can't learn to leave a stable string without hearing it."...

I agree, I said "hear" metaphorically. In detail, when I turn the pin, my attention goes to the pin's behavior inside the pin-block, there I evaluate the over-pulling that is needed for then charging the pin. So I agree with John when he talks about mechanical “feel”.

..."He (Bill Garlick) was leading the North Bennett Street School in 1975, when I went there. He later was hired by Steinway and Sons to develop their training program for their techs. Bill is highly regarded in the field and I am grateful to have been a student."...

It would be nice if Bill could partecipate in our discussions. I'm glad that by using an ETD you could become a better tuner, having also treasured many years of aural tuning.

#1790690 - November 17, 2011 06:45 PM Re: Does it make sense to ask for a UT? [Re: PianoStudent88]

Chris Leslie:

..."Jake is asking, I think, for a practical explanation of your tuning sequence. Alfredo, I do not wish to be offensive, but you are very difficult to understand. You have presented a very theoretical paper that nobody understands, and you do not understand that others do not understand. The reason is partly because you have not presented any practical explanation of how to achieve your tuning so that less intellectual people (like me) can practice your method.

In contrast, Bill very clearly explains what he does and how to go about it so that tuners can go to a piano and tune a EBVT and mindless octaves. However, tuners cannot even begin a CHAS tuning because they have no practical steps to follow. Nobody will appreciated your concepts unless you provide a simplified practical guide to CHAS tuning. Perhaps then your theories will begin to make sense."...

Thank you very much, Chris and Jake, for your comments. I appreciate your help, your feedback and any suggestion aimed at understanding and applying the CHAS model.

So far I've started three threads in PW:

Circular Harmonic System - Chas - were it is possible to discuss on and ask about any theoretical and practical issue;

Some posters seem to understand, others seem to appreciate the possibility to deepen on the subject. How would you provide more "friendly" opportunities? Would you start a new FAQ's thread? Which form should "a simplified practical guide to CHAS tuning" have? Any other idea?

You should post a precise tuning sequence. What you keep referring too is too vague to be of any use. I know you have refused to provide a precise tuning scheme in the past, from which I conclude chas tuning does not exist. I'm open to be proven wrong.

I had not seen the above referenced sequence before but a few things about it it immediately come to mind. It looks no different from the truncated sequence found in many tuning books that originated from the Braide-White book, Piano Tuning and Allied Arts. Many publications have taken that material and abbreviated or re-arranged it one way or another. It is still the same idea no matter how it is presented. Alfredo describes 4ths as "sharp" and 5ths as "flat" instead of "wide" or "narrow" respectively. This alone is a reason to dismiss the writing as poorly researched and written.

The descriptions of how intervals and their checks should sound are too vague and thus open to interpretation. Quite a wide variety of results would be expected from following these instructions. The worst result, I am afraid would not be ET at all but you guessed it, Reverse Well. Show me a novice tuner who tries to tune a piano with those instructions and I'll show you a piano tuned in Reverse Well.

This does not mean I believe Alfredo tunes in RW. I have heard his recordings. They sound quite good. A very well executed ET, indeed. From what I could gather by reading what he has written, Alfredo advocates ET with a certain amount of stretch designed to incorporate inharmonicity to an optimum degree. That is fine, nothing wrong with that at all. However, that is what tuners have been doing in the USA now for over 30 years with far more clearly written instructions on how to do it.

Furthermore, I have a problem with the title given to what is nothing more than Standard Equal Temperament with octaves (including the initial temperament octave) optimized for inharmonicity. "Circular Harmonic System" could be the description of any Well Temperament and Reverse Well for that matter. Any of them is "Circular" and any of them would be "Harmonic".

It reminds me of the labels that are put on agricultural produce in the USA and Europe. Produce which is grown with no manufactured chemicals or fertilizers is called "Organic" in the USA and "Biological" ("Bio" for short) in Europe. However, produce raised with manufactured chemicals and fertilizers are no less "organic" nor "biological" than those raised without them.

Finding a name that has not been commonly used before the general public and writing long papers with mathematics that the general public would not comprehend unfortunately does not amount to any kind of new discovery. ET is now and always has been a theoretical model to which many people are drawn by its one-sided logic. It makes sense to many people to simply divide the 12 tone scale equally. However, the results were not what performing musicians wanted to hear in centuries past.

Helmholtz and Braide-White strongly advocated it as a solution. Isacoff recently described it as the "final solution" in his book. That was a very poor choice of words if you ask me! Throughout the 20th Century and now into the 21st, music education has made ET become the one and only frame of reference. The mere idea of "unequal" temperament seems unnatural and unwanted; not even to be considered. Fortunately, when exposed to other possibilities, musicians often find something quite appealing to the re-introduction of Well Temperament to the modern piano.

Which form should "a simplified practical guide to CHAS tuning" have? Any other idea?

Alfredo, can you use the symbology described on Reblitz page 225 (second edition) for the "Potter F-A Temperament", and then use this symbology to describe the CHas tuning sequence? If you do this then I am sure that many tuners will finally get the "leg up" to practice your tuning and then really appreciate it's value.

What I find disturbing is the refusal by Alfredo to provide a clear tuning sequence, despite being told by several of the most distinguished piano technicians in the USA and Europe, why the sequence he posted is too vague.

From this I conclude (no personal insult intended) that the whole Chas tuning is an illusion. There is no such thing. Alfredo just tunes ET like the best but that's all it is.

Added to this deception is the "mathematical" paper, which in my expert opinion as mathematician and tuning theory expert is what Wolfgang Pauli coined as "not even wrong". I call it crackpottery. You can find a forum on "not even wrong".

Reason I'm restating this and undoubtedly upsetting Alfredo again is that novice and aspiring tuners seem somehow drawn to this Chas stuff, and naively believe it must be better than the "conventional ET" that is usually taught (wow, so many equations!) and are thus led astray.

Hence I'd like clearly stated why Chas is not taken seriously by many (if not all) experts in the area.

Tuning technicalities aside, I take Alfredo's sequence as a description of what he does; "tiny little flat", "faintly beating" mean something more than provided for in Randy Potter's notation. No doubt some could go through everything in these threads and come up with a sequence in that form, but Alfredo?

David Pinnegar and I have both suggested, in the other thread, that Alfredo turn his attention to unequal temperaments. I'd hope the insights and inspiration he can draw from his model and his experience will lead him to something new that everyone will want to hear.

By the way, we were in Sicily earlier in the month. One day we had lunch in an old town off the beaten track. The conversation in the bar could have come straight off the stage at La Scala, not least the basso profundo. So I'm all for Alfredo and what he can bring to the party.

Alfredo is welcome as anyone is. However, it seems to me that he is trying to convey some new discovery which he feels is the ultimate approach to tuning. I well recall in my 1986 session at the Steinway factory with Bill Garlick (who had previously been a North Bennett Street School instructor, was the consultant to Dr. Al Sanderson and perhaps the most highly respected authority on tuning there could be), (also mentioned in one of Alfredo's earlier discussions), that he said, "There is nothing that anyone can do today with regard to tuning that someone else has not already done".

A temperament can be equal whether it is within an audibly narrow octave, an audibly beatless octave, an octave with a slight audible beat or an octave wide enough so that the fifths become beatless. From each to the next is a very small degree and each increment from an audibly beatless octave to slightly narrow or slightly stretched produces a nuance of effect, yet all tonalities will still have a character, one analogous to the other.

By definition and purpose, Equal Temperament (ET) has no tonal variation. Yet, Alfredo, while maintaining that ET is the only proper way to tune a piano, still maintains that there is a difference in each key and key signature. If it is because some people can recognize any note played on a piano without a reference and some people can recognize which key some music is in without a reference, one might be inclined to believe that ET does have distinctions.

However, the same would be true if the piano is tuned in any Well Temperament (WT) or mis-tuned as often may be the case in Reverse Well or whether the piano is out of tune and needs tuning. There would be a limit to how far out of tune and off pitch the piano is, of course but anyone who has a good sense of pitch knows which note is being played and which key any particular chord may be in, regardless of any of the above variations.

In all of the discussions between Alfredo and Bernhard Stopper whose amount of stretch in the octave results in a beatless octave-fifth (although Herr Stopper thinks of it as the other way around; the beatless octave-fifth results in a certain amount of stretch in the temperament octave), they seemed to be either trying to state the same idea or some very minute difference between what Alfredo suggests is optimal and what Herr Stopper suggests is optimal.

Just how much different could a piano sound tuned by either Sr. Alfredo or Herr Stopper? Not much. Not much at all. Just how much different would a piano sound tuned by Alfredo by ear and one tuned by an optimized ETD program? Not much, if any at all.

So, the suggestion or implication that the Circular Harmonic System is the Holy Grail of tuning is far too overstated.

Let's say for example that I said I had found a fabulous new cure for Hyperthermia. To cure a hyperthermic condition you will need to consume a vial of 236.6 milliliters of cryogenically treated monohydrogendioxide, assume a reclining posistion, apply a force of 3,600 meters per second of mixture of Dioxygen 23.2%, Dinitrogen 75.5%, Monocarbondioxide, 0.5% with added trace amounts of Dihydrogen, Argon, Neon, Helium, Krypton and Xenon for a period of 300,000 milliseconds.

I could then show pages of mathematics to show how the process works and pages of chemical symbols and proportions which few people could read or understand.

Or, I could say, "If you get all hot and sweaty, drink a glass of ice water, sit down and turn on a fan for 5 minutes".

Similarly, Alfredo could simply say, "I believe the most appropriate way to tune the modern piano is in Standard Equal Temperament with optimally stretched octaves".

A comment from Bill Garlick was posted in this thread not long ago: "There is nothing that anyone can do today with regard to tuning that someone else has not already done".

Eventually I've remembered where I had read something vaguely similar:

"Behind the mountains there live people, too. Be modest; as yet you have discovered and though nothing which others have not thought and discovered before you. And even if you have done so, regard it as a gift from above, which you have got to share with others." It's one of Schumann's "Rules….".

Thank you for posting the sequence on your site. I worry that the sequence, as written, can still cause uncertainty, largely because:

1. The term "flat" is used to describe a narrow interval. Late in the sequence, this terminology is explained, but in the early steps, it is not. Thus the 2nd step is "(A4)-A3 - tiny little flat, just on the beating threshold." Reading this, I at first thought that you meant to make the lower note flat from a perfect unison, which would create a wide octave. Since "flat" means a narrow octave, the intent is instead to raise the pitch of the lower note, creating a narrow octave. Most confusing to speak of a rise in pitch as flat.

2. The tuning partials are not defined. Are all of the steps referring to the pitch of the fundamentals?.

3. Many people will want more specific information about the exact pitch shifts in cents. To speak of tiny shifts in pitch is natural, but the word "tiny" can mean a wide range of pitches, from less than a cent to several cents.

Sharp or flat is referred to the note (centre string) I’m meant to tune. The already-tuned note is in brackets “()”:...".

Then I wrote:..."Step 2 − (A4)-A3 - tiny little flat, just on the beating threshold"

Perhaps for the novice tuner I should add one notion: from an apparently beatless point, we can make a "wide" interval either by sharpening the top note or by flattening the bottom note; and we can make a "narrow" interval either by flattening the top note or by sharpening the bottom note.

Do you think this would help? Would this suggest that the Step-2 (A4)-A3 interval is clearly going to be wide?

Sharp or flat is referred to the note (centre string) I’m meant to tune. The already-tuned note is in brackets “()”:...".

Then I wrote:..."Step 2 − (A4)-A3 - tiny little flat, just on the beating threshold"

Perhaps for the novice tuner I should add one notion: from an apparently beatless point, we can make a "wide" interval either by sharpening the top note or by flattening the bottom note; and we can make a "narrow" interval either by flattening the top note or by sharpening the bottom note.

Do you think this would help? Would this suggest that the Step-2 (A4)-A3 interval is clearly going to be wide?

No, no. The problem is, if memory serves me correctly, later in the sequence, you refer to a narrow octave as a flat octave. As a result, I assumed that the sequence was saying that the A3-A4 octave should be narrow. (Although I doubted that you meant to say this.)

A note for novice tuners explaining how an octave can be made narrow or wide might be good, but my problem was just with the use of the word "flat" speaking of an octave. I would suggest using simple, declarative statements such as:

"Tune A3 very slightly flat from A4, just at the edge of beating, creating a wide octave."

(In other words, write full sentences, so that a simple verb such as "tune" or "raise" or "lower" applies to one of the strings in the interval in each step.)

..."2. The tuning partials are not defined. Are all of the steps referring to the pitch of the fundamentals?."...

All the steps are referred to low partial matchings, like 2:1, 3:2 and so on, but actually when I tune I listen to beats and compare them, I don't think about partials.

To All, Happy *20.New Year.12*

a.c.

But the partials are what beat, yes? Without knowing what low partials you are listening to for beating, reproducing CHas from these instructions is at best difficult.

Has your excellent practice as an aural tuner led you away from specifying exactly what you listen to, which may well be different partials on different pairs of notes (as opposed to just the usual practice of listening to different partials on different intervals, but always using the same partials for the same intervals)? In other words, you know the sound that you want, and obviously get, but writing down all of the exact partials seems tedious? I hate to say it, but defining these low partials seems to be needed. It might help if you did a tuning with another good tuner taking notes while you explained what you were listening for. (What has happened to dear Oleg?)

As always, a great admirer of the truly remarkable sound that you get from pianos,

..."No, no. The problem is, if memory serves me correctly, later in the sequence, you refer to a narrow octave as a flat octave. As a result, I assumed that the sequence was saying that the A3-A4 octave should be narrow. (Although I doubted that you meant to say this.)"...

Would you be able to point out where - later in the sequence - I refer to a narrow octave as a flat octave?

..."A note for novice tuners explaining how an octave can be made narrow or wide might be good,..."...

Do you mean this(?): ...we can make a "wide" interval either by sharpening the top note or by flattening the bottom note; and we can make a "narrow" interval either by flattening the top note or by sharpening the bottom note.

Someone says that ET octaves can be narrow, I cannot (and would never) say that. Chas ET octaves are wide and get slowly wider and wider.

..."but my problem was just with the use of the word "flat" speaking of an octave. I would suggest using simple, declarative statements such as: "Tune A3 very slightly flat from A4, just at the edge of beating, creating a wide octave." (In other words, write full sentences, so that a simple verb such as "tune" or "raise" or "lower" applies to one of the strings in the interval in each step.)"...

Would you be able to point out where - later in the sequence - I refer to a narrow octave as a flat octave?

I cannot find the sequence on your site, now. I apologize if I misspoke, but I thought that the near the end, a narrow octave was defined as flat.

In any case, I'm looking forward to your revisions, to hearing the results as we attempt the tuning, and reading the ongoing discussion. I hope that your holidays were good, and that many songs were played on pianos that you tuned.

..."...you would have to pay attention to the tuning pin movement, if you would like to have a decently stable tuning. It is important not to have a clockwise twist on the tuning pin, since hitting the strings with the hammers adds counterclockwise torque making the twist likely to untwist and detune the note."...

In my opinion you (partistic) managed to word that fundamental issue very nicely. I hope to be able to deepen on that (with you All), as in my experience pins control and "stable tuning" enable us to move towards our favorite tuning form.

Personally, I "charge" all pins also with a "counterclockwise torque". In fact, the "counterclockwise torque" is what is meant to have to determine the actual frequency. In other words (perhaps you can help me), the correct frequency must be the "natural" outcome, resulting from the balance between the string's pulling and the pin's counterclockwise "charge".

Hi Alfredo,I just wanted some clarification. When speaking of "counterclockwise torque", does that mean that you tune the note as normal and then, at the last minute, twist the tuning lever counterclockwise just a little bit, and then leave the note like that? Does this make it more stable in your experience? In other words, when and how much counterclockwise torque do you apply?

Let's consider the case of a "normal" pin and say that I'm tuning a flat note: while I turn the hammer clockwise, I evaluate how much clockwise torque and pin bending is taking place for the pin to turn at its bottom (down inside the pin-block). This allows me to get an idea of the pin's behavior and lets me guess the over pull. In the meantime I'm getting passed the "right spot"; then I can over pull, knowing that in order to get back to the right spot with the correct "pin charge" I'll have to "subtract" the clockwise torque and pin's bending (on a grand), possibly gaining the right spot with a (very) small amount of counterclockwise torque and (very) little pin-bending towards the speaking length of the string.

You ask: how much counterclockwise torque do you apply?

There I evaluate the pin's propensity to move; in other words, how much force (on the pin) would make the pitch flat or sharp: I refer flat Vs sharp propensity to the pin's counterclockwise torque and bending, and measure the pin's propensity (to flatten or sharpen the pitch) by touching lightly the tuning hammer. The flat Vs sharp force rapport I "normally" establish goes from 7/3 to 8/2, meaning that I need 7 or 8 points of push-flat force against 3 or 2 points of pull-sharp force.

I hope I could answer your question, perhaps you can word this practice more clearly. Please let me know if this post is only more confusing and I will delete it.

Thanks Alfredo. Most of it makes sense. I think that I naturally or intuitively do this already to some extent (maybe not as accurate or calculated as you though). I pull slightly past the correct pitch, and then ever so slightly turn (or just touch)the tuning lever counterclockwise. I think this more or less along the lines of what you are doing, right?

One thing I couldn't figure out from your post though was the term 'Vs'. What is a 'V'?

Hi Erich, You say ..."I pull slightly past the correct pitch, and then ever so slightly turn (or just touch)the tuning lever counterclockwise. I think this more or less along the lines of what you are doing, right?"...

In general I think that's correct, I understand that from a higher pitch you get down to the right spot. But that, to me, means that you take away some clockwise torque only.

These are (more or less) the steps I refer to (in general):

1 - Turn the lever clockwise (apply and evaluate pin torque and bending)2 - Turn clockwise (you must feel the pin rotating at its bottom)3 - Turn clockwise (overpull - the above and this, all in one go - how sharp? It depends on the pin torque-bending/rotation rapport)4 - Turn counterclockwise (for zeroing clockwise torque while you are still high in pitch - the pin must not rotate)5 - Turn counterclockwise (get passed the right spot - now going flat you "charge" the pin - the pin has not rotated)6 - Release the lever and help the pin's setting (now your pin has a residual counterclockwise torque that can balance the string's tension and the hammer impacts)7 - Check the pin's charge (as explained in a previous post)

Of course, avoid practicing on a piano that you want to preserve.

To go through steps 1-2-3 will take one or two seconds; steps 4 and 5 may require more time/seconds, depending on the pin. Few more seconds for steps 6 and 7.

All this to say that many beginners are very concerned about the pitch, and many of them go for the pitch on its own, mainly concentrating on that. But really, in order to hear pitches and beats, after a while, you do not need to concentrate, actually you'll hear all that even if you do not want to. What I concentrate on is the pin's behavior, the amount of torque it can take and how it turns inside the pinblock.

Regards, a.c.

Edit: This post is about the "pin charge" issue; do not forget to distribute the string's tension on its three lengths.